


Turbulent Midnight

by Rosehip



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Halloween Challenge, Nightmares, The Fade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 13:14:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21075479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosehip/pseuds/Rosehip
Summary: Nisha lived on a farm, so the Circle of Magi is a lot to get used to. But she would have thought she knew how to DREAM by now. Turns out, the Fade is full of surprises in areas where the veil is thin.Halloween Prompt: Nightmares





	Turbulent Midnight

**Author's Note:**

> This will be part of a larger work: Nisha, the narrator, has arrived with a dozen elven mage apprentices after a large scale effort to find the mages the alienages were hiding. (You know they are; Alarith has way too much good mage gear.)
> 
> That's it! That's all you need to know! Thanks for reading, and thanks in particular to [AngstOfDestiny](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AngstOfDestiny/pseuds/AngstOfDestiny) and [Madamsnark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MadamSnark/pseuds/MadamSnark) For beta-ing for me.

I'm a week in the circle before I actually dream. Too tired, I guess. A dozen of us elves crammed into one wagon made for bad sleeping on the journey. And, you know. The whole being surrounded by armed, grumpy men thing was new and made us all jumpy. So, every night since, my head hits the pillow and I am _out._

But not tonight. I finally wander through the misty green of the Fade. I have two kinds of dreams. I get the normal ones like anybody, where I wander through my own brain and dream about Mama making me a new hat or I'm trying to find a lost pig or something. I suppose those are still Fade-adjacent. Then, more common when I am well rested, being a mage, I know I'm dreaming and wander the Fade itself. Not being a Dreamer, I can't really plan how this goes.

I look around. I hear the distant voices of the hundreds of other mages sleeping around me. That's new, and I'm not sure I like it. I can't see anyone, but they're there.

The Fade around me takes on the look of a forest, with crumbling stone ruins scattered through it. Ivy and saplings win against the stone, even in dreams, but I can see towers as well, farther off, and still standing. This isn't anything like I'm used to.

The Fade as I know it is an endless field in the moonlight, kind of hazy and a deep green instead of the moonlit blue you see at night. The grains themselves seem to whisper just out of hearing. My family grows vegetables and tea, but in my dreams, it's usually an endless wheat field with a windbreak you can never reach. Don't ask me why. I meet strange people in the field; other dreamers, sometimes. But once, a woman without a face told me riddles with no answers. Another time, a great wolf walked beside me. The Fade is a second home to me.

Or so I am used to thinking. Tonight, I hear a distant howl cut across the murmuring voices. A flock of scales fly past with a screech. I'm not kidding, just scales. I feel something brush my foot, and it is a jeweled snake, about to strike. I dart out of the way. I look for any actual person, and I see a silhouette of a human, who turns to me and their eyes are holes full of fangs and flames.

I run. The sound of laughter like a crackling, burning log follows me.

“Over here!” a voice calls. “It's quieter this way!”

I follow the sound, running in the way of dreams, propelling myself through the air by pushing my feet against whatever they can reach. I float past several figures I don't want to look at closely. The light grows dimmer, as I reach denser trees.

“This way! I'm behind the wall!”

Look, I cannot for the life of me explain why it seems like a good idea, all right? What else can I do but check it out? I can always wake up, though I prefer not to. I see a pale hand beckoning me. I slip through a gap in some trees behind a crumbling stone cottage thatched in glossy black feathers.

I peer into the darkness and find Macsen, of all people. His hair tumbles softly around his face and his nightshirt falls open at his throat. The light reflects green in his pale eyes. He smiles.

“Why are you hiding back here?” I whisper.

His voice is pitched softly when he answers. “It's very busy tonight and I don't want to tangle with every spirit here. I thought I'd just keep out of their way.”

“It is very crowded. Why is that?”

“The veil is thin. Hundreds of stressed-out mages who want so much and can't have it, afraid, angry, hungry... emotions coming from so many, dreaming all at once. Of course spirits are drawn to this area.”

“So I was safer on the farm.”

“Define safe.”

“That's true. You know, I've never shared a dream with someone I knew, before. Besides familiar spirits, I mean.”

“It happens sometimes,” he says, as though it isn't what's happening now. “Unless you're very powerful, it isn't something you can plan, though.”

“Where do you usually go in dreams?” I ask.

“I wander around, go where things are interesting.”

I raise an eyebrow at him. “But now, you're hiding.”

He laughs, and the sound warms me. “It got a little more interesting than I planned. I'd prefer to avoid Hunger, at least.”

“The one with the eyes?”

“Yes.”

“Well you did miss dinner.”

“As good a reason as any to avoid him.” He winks at me.

“That makes sense.” I peer into a back window of a shack leaning against the wall and see- nothing. I mean it, truly, nothing.

Until a light flickers across a face for just a second. I back away fast, with a gasp.

“You want to feel less watched?” Macsen asks. “We should just sit with our backs against the wall so nothing can see us from behind.”

“All right, that makes sense.” I don't know why it didn't occur to me on my own. Too much weirdness, I suppose. We move down a bit, and sit under a huge pine that forms a shelter against the rambling stone. “I'm not gonna lie,” I continue. “This is interesting. How does anybody get any rest?” A scream tears across the air from somewhere behind us.

“Most people find a place and make it their own.”

I think of my field. I wonder if I can get back to it. I see a headless horse through the trees for a second. I liked the great wolf better. “Do you have a place?” I ask.

“Yes, but I'm not always there. I'd like to know about you, though. What are your dreams usually like?”

There's a pause after he says _dreams. You want... I'd like... Your dreams... _And his shoulder feels so good resting against mine, much more solid than dreams usually are. Macsen is never so careless of my space.

It isn't Macsen.

I jump to my feet so fast it wakes me up.

I hear crying children and the older apprentices telling them it will be all right. I look over at Macsen's bed, which is empty. That chills me. He's probably not even asleep, then.

I look down at Silvana's bed, but it's empty too. Ah, there she is. She's using Jowan as a pillow, and asleep, I think, but he looks like he's been crying.

I can't take it. I don't want any more sleep. It won't do me any good, anyway. This room is full of torment and nightmares. I don't know what hour it is, but it doesn't matter. I grab my clothes and head to the bathroom, where I am not the only one splashing cold water across tired eyes or staring blearily at the mirror.

I un-twist my red hair. The twists got very fuzzy in my sleep. I must have been tossing very badly. I don't, usually. Strange.

I might as well do my work. I'm very behind the others in mundane education. I'm lucky I'm not the only one, so they set up that catch-up class instead of sticking me with the littles. I fetch my things from my trunk and wander out into the hallway, where the templars don't even look surprised. I reach the library and see why. Over a dozen people are up, half of them people I came with. I see Macsen, still with his hair in the braid he sleeps in, sitting at the last table with a giant book. He doesn't look up at all until I sit across from him with a mug of tea for each of us. (I do appreciate the endless tea supply in the Circle.)

Macsen's ears perk and he smiles. “You too?”

“If you mean the Fade is full of extra weirdness tonight, then yes.”

He stares over my shoulder. “It gets like this. Not all the time, but... enough. I don't sleep that well in the first place.”

“It was never like this back home,” I say, staring at my tea.

“Not for me, either. I wondered if it was because I was very little... but no, most people say their dreams are worse, or at least strange. It's probably the thin veil, or the spirits being drawn to all the magic we're doing... who knows.”

_Your doppelganger seems to, _ I think. The real Macsen seems so much less sure about that same opinion. I think that if this is how things are, then we were all so much better off left in our fields and cities and forests. He looks directly at me then, and I know he's thinking it, too.

But he doesn't say anything about it. “Ir abelas,” he murmurs, instead.

It sounds like 'I'm sorry'. “It's not your fault,” I return,

“I can still feel bad.”

I look down with nothing to say until I see the book he's working on. For a second, I think I'm dreaming again. What else can I think, having a pre-dawn conversation with a shy boy I just dreamed about, who is casually drinking tea after nightmares of his own, while reading a book illuminated with shambling skeletons?

“A little light reading?” I ask, trying to sound... ironic, that's the word.

He bites his lip. “A little bit. I've read it before, but during a distracting time. I've made progress in my spellwork since then, so I wanted to go through it again. It's the best overview of entropy in the tower. It was written by a necromancer who claims to have seen demons raise the dead, as well. She makes note of several distinctions in types of undead, which I figure will be good to be sure about.”

“I'm still working on the fact that you got up from a nightmare to read a book that features an illustration of a skeleton horde.”

He laughs a little. “It's not a subject that really bothers me. I can feel people's souls, and their energy as a separate thing. Maybe it's because I lost someone early. I felt her leave.”He shakes his head like he's clearing it. “I don't know. I'm glad to know we're more than our bodies. That everyone is … out there still, somewhere. And, in the case of the Tranquil, still right here, no matter what anyone says. Excuse me, I know this isn't your type of magic. I don't mean to bore you, or be creepy.” He blushes. It's adorable.

“It's all right, I want to know all about magic. I mean, we shouldn't limit ourselves.” I look around at the thousands of books lining the high walls of the library; one of several in this place. “I learned all I could, but I never dreamed I'd have access to this many books or teachers.”

“So you're determined to make the most of it?”

“Yes. What else can I do? Apparently not sleep.”

“It should be better tomorrow.”

“Words to live by.”


End file.
